


Litte Darlin' (The Ice is Slowly Melting)

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [58]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fatherhood, Fireworks, Gen, Kidfic, Mycroft and Sally have their parenting moments too, New Year's Eve, PTSD Sherlock, Parenthood, Sherlock experiments with stuff, Sherlock is not a conventional parent, baby care, it's for science!, nor is John come to that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-27 10:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tales of two men of Baker Street and how they deal with parenting infants and toddlers; how they respond to infant bodily fluids, the demands of ponytails and public appearances after their daughter has finished doing their hair.<br/>**</p><p>These tales are largely the result of online chats I have with natsuko1978 about the hazards of parenting and what they mean to John and Sherlock. We laugh a lot. I hope you like them too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Experiment

**Author's Note:**

> The series title is from The Beatles' Here Comes the Sun.
> 
> Chapter One's title is from Cole Porter.

People can be such idiots. Sherlock Holmes has known that since he was five. John Watson has known it since he was about twelve. People can make a lot of stupid assumptions based on a lot of ridiculous things, including gender, age and occupation.

On that understanding, it's hardly a surprise that some people - mostly those who didn't know them well - were concerned about how the men of Baker Street would cope with caring for an infant, particularly when it came to  stuff like nappies and baby vomit. An ex army doctor and an easily bored consulting detective - how was that ever going to work?

Here’s how.

John Watson came down the stairs in the dead of night, his infant daughter wailing in his arms.

“Shh, baby girl,” he said to her, soft and gentle, “Just a minute, sweetheart. Daddy’s going to have you all clean and dry in a minute. Shush, now.”

He emerged into the living room to find the change table already laid out, with a bowl of lukewarm water and the gentlest of baby soaps, a clean nappy ready for use, baby wipes and lotion. A clean sleep suit in pale orange was laid out as well. Sherlock was at the kitchen table, peering into a microscope, as though he had nothing to do with the arrangement.

John laid Violet on the change table. “There, there, sweetheart, not long now. Sherlock’s got everything ready. Look at that. You’d think he’d done it before.”

“It’s hardly difficult,” Sherlock said in a familiar waspish tone, not looking up from his slides, “And it’s not like I haven’t seen you do it by now.”

“Oooh, Sherlock’s cross with us for not observing him observing,” John cooed at the baby, removing the soiled nappy. Ah. Not just wet. Oh well, Doctor Watson had splattered with many more noxious substances, sometimes in exciting combinations, including blood, pulped bone, pus, spit, snot, urine, adult faeces and putrefying flesh. And a good portion of that was just last week. A little baby poop was a walk in the park.

“Clever Sherlock, though, got it absolutely right, just like he always does.” John used the warm water and a sponge to clean her delicate skin. He sensed Sherlock’s shift in posture – a little mollified, still a little irritated.

Violet’s wailing had diminished to tiny grumbles. She kicked her freed legs like a little pink frog, and burbled.

She waited until Daddy had cleaned and moisturised her and placed a fresh nappy under her bottom before peeing. Partially on her Daddy. John raised an eyebrow at her. “Timing, kiddo. And aim.”

Kiddo burbled happily, kicked her legs, realised she was wet again, and wailed.

“Here,” Sherlock rose from the table and handed John a cloth to wipe his hands.

“Take care of her?” John said, as though it were merely a suggestion, but he stepped away to wash his hands properly and Sherlock was left in charge.

He stripped off his latex gloves, tossed them to the other side of the room, and regarded Violet as though she were a puzzle. He hadn’t done this part before.

“Your timing could indeed be better,” he said to Violet calmly, not sounding annoyed in the slightest, “But I suppose you can hardly help it. Unless you did that on purpose. Mycroft used to claim that I did.”

As he talked, his large, dextrous and scrupulously clean hands bathed her skin again, dried it, reapplied lotion, stopped to brush and then tickle baby feet so that Violet squealed in delight and kicked happily against his fingers. He tickled her tummy then and bent to blow a soft raspberry in her face. Satisfied with her happy response, he resumed the folding and fastening of the nappy, then lifted her up against his chest while he bundled the soiled things aside and left the table clear for Stage Two.

She began to grizzle again. Sherlock held his pinkie against her lips and she gummed at the knuckle, then wailed again as it proved unsatisfactory for her needs. Sherlock petted her and laid her back down to put her in fresh pyjamas.

As he finished, John reappeared with a bottle, proving he hadn’t just been idly gazing fondly at the scene (well, not the whole time). “Here.”

Sherlock had scooped Violet up again, but he held out his wrist. Despite the fact he’d only just tested the temperature himself, John obligingly shook out a few drops against his pulse point.

Sherlock nodded, then licked the milk off his wrist and took the bottle.

John had a moment of _that is Mary’s breast milk, Sherlock just drank Mary’s breast milk, that’s just wrong, that’s weird, why is it weird? It’s just Sherlock being Sherlock and it’s not like I haven’t done that myself… well Mary and I have… no, that’s a completely different thing and this is just making sure the expressed milk isn’t too hot and why shouldn’t he just do that and I bet he’ll make notes about it later; that’s actually pretty funny and ah, fuck it, societal conventions about breast milk are weird._

And thus died yet another of John’s minor conventionalities, and good riddance too.

He looked up to see Sherlock regarding him with equal parts amusement and impatience. Violet was in his arms, contentedly suckling on the bottle. “Are you quite done?”

“Quite. Thanks. I’m assuming that by the end of our lives I’ll have no inhibitions whatsoever.”

“Good. They’re tedious.”

“Useful, sometimes.”

“Tedious.”

John just grinned and went to clean up the change area. He hesitated over the nappy. “Are you still…?”

Sherlock sighed. “Tedious, John.”

“I can prep the slide for you, if you still want one, that’s all.”

“Oh. Yes. Well. Please.”

John got a clean slide and a pipette and took a sample of Violet’s faeces. “Need to see before I fix it?”

“No, it’s similar enough to last week’s sample.”

“Rightio.” So John finished preparing the slide. He returned to the clear-up duty. He disposed of the stuff for disposal, dropped things for laundering into the soaking bucket, wiped down surfaces and washed his hands.

He returned to find Violet laid against Sherlock’s shoulder while he patted her on the back. Their darling girl hiccupped before belching a little milk onto the back of Sherlock’s silk shirt. Sherlock glanced over his shoulder at the damage. He seemed amused.

“Slide?” suggested John innocently.

“If you’d be so kind,” agreed Sherlock, deadpan.

All right. So Sherlock’s collection of baby excreta slides, from Violet and later Ford, was hardly standard baby care practice.

(Sherlock kept the data beautifully labelled and accompanied by a moleskin-bound notebook full of the results of various tests and notations about infant dietary health, which he cross referenced with a number of respected medical texts on the subject.)  

And anyway, we are talking about a man who has held astronomically unhygienic things in his hands, put some of the less toxic ones in his actual mouth and has ended up in dumpsters and sewers on multiple occasions in the pursuit of crime-solving. A little infant waste was never going to faze that man in the least.

So. Unconventional (and possibly even weird) it may have been, but it once helped to solve a case – faecal matter proving the true age and dietary intake of the allegedly missing infant and unveiling a child trafficking ring that had resulted in four broken bones and lacerations needing 74 stitches. None of them on either John or Sherlock.

So - parenting gooey infants? The men of Baker Street were just fine with that. Just fine.

Parenting toddlers, now. That had a few more challenges...


	2. Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mrs Hudson learns a new way to make ponytails when she looks after Violet for the afternoon. She doesn't approve. And she blames John.

Mrs Hudson places the blame on John, and he takes it, because he certainly embraced the practice. But it wasn’t his idea.

"MRS H! Do my haaaaiir! Puh-leeeeeeeease!" hollers Violet. Her hair has come out of its scrunchie. In her attempts to fix it herself, Violet has turned her hair into a bird's nest. Mrs Hudson has to cut the rubber band out of the knots and spends half an hour brushing Violet's dark hair out smooth again. 

Violet isn't gracious about it. She fidgets and complains, though is happy enough to be distracted by a raisin biscuit, which she proceeds to dismantle so she can count the raisins while Mrs Hudson finishes the task.

But when Mrs Hudson fetches another rubber band to hold Violet's hair back in a ponytail, the four year old says "No, Mrs H, use the vacuum cleaner!"

Confusion ensues, and stubborn little Violet will not let her grandma put her hair back the normal way. She throws quite the little tantrum, in fact, as well as a handful of sultanas. So Mrs Hudson has to get the vacuum cleaner out anyway while Violet sits, sulking and in disgrace, in a corner.

Curiosity is a curse, however, and Mrs Hudson succumbs. "What do you mean about using the vacuum cleaner to do your hair, Violet?"

"Like Daddy does, not the _boring_ way."

Violet proceeds, with the use of rather moist whooshing noises and elaborate hand gestures, to explain what she means. Mrs Hudson doesn't understand at all.

Violet decides to demonstrate on the duster. She gets Mrs Hudson to take the head off the cleaner, wrap the rubber band around the nozzle and then suck all the feathers into the tube. Then she deftly rolls the rubber band off the pipe and around the feather duster.

The cleaner is turned off and Mrs Hudson is left with duster feathers wrapped tight in a rubber band.

"See? Suck up my hair, put on the band and then do the scrunchie. It's easy!"

Reluctantly, Mrs Hudson tries it on Violet and privately concedes that it is quite easy, but she still doesn't approve.

Mrs Hudson lets John know how much she does not approve when he comes home. John raises an eyebrow but then meekly takes the rebuke and nods and says he'll take proper care of Violet's hair in future, of course he will, and no, it wasn't Sherlock's idea. (They all do it, though – every one of her parents.)

(In a few decades, Ford will move to Mars and learn that Violet still uses this very technique in that planet’s lower gravity to manage her long hair more easily. She is, in fact, the cause of it being a widespread practice among most of her long-haired colleagues. They call it ‘the MorWat Tie’.)

On this day, on plain old Earth, John mans up and takes the bullet for this one. He doesn't quite know how to admit to Mrs Hudson that this particular time-saving notion is pure Mary Morstan.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea for this story comes from ihnasarima, who sent [this Tumblr gif](http://ihnasarima.tumblr.com/post/53577504632/221b-hound-ihnasarima-221b-hound?utm_campaign=SharedPost&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=TumblriOS) as a fic prompt.
> 
> This chapter's title comes from the title song of the musical Hair!


	3. The King and All of His Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two year old Sherrinford has a Very Important Call for his father, and he's going to hand that plastic mobile on to the final authority, no matter who his father might be entertaining at the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story sprang from an image posted on my Facebook wall, which said: “No matter how big and bad you are, when a two year old hands you a toy phone, you answer it.”
> 
> Brits, I've taken liberties with the depiction of your future monarch. As an Australian, he's mine as well, though for my own country I'm a republican at heart. Still, he seems a nice chap.
> 
> The title of this fic is from the song by Wolf Gang. [Listen to it on Youtube. ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZLv36LvRo8&list=PLknzogll8zREJG_GrmYG9z8ejNolz-uxB&index=7)

 

The visit was impromptu. That doesn’t mean Mycroft Holmes was not expecting it. The new king had particular ideas about his role in the constitutional monarchy, and while he certainly upheld the history and appropriateness of the monarchy’s place in a parliamentary democracy, he did rather like to have these little ‘social calls’, just to get a feel for things. Mycroft certainly judged the King to be as intelligent as his grandmother, and as charming as his late mother, but trod carefully around these visits. While not improper, they were not entirely proper either.

Still, when the King calls, one accommodates, even if one is tantamount to the British Government, especially since that role was not entirely either constitutional or democratic in itself.  Mycroft met with the monarch in the heavily protected, innermost _sanctum sanctorum_ of his home, where he fully expected to have all the privacy and discretion required.

Nobody, however, told the Palace bodyguard what they were supposed to do with a two year old who slipped through the cordon, intent on taking an important message to his father. They’d attempted to stop the child, of course, but, you know, he was a _child_. The use of reasonable force was obviously downright _unreasonable_. So one of the men peeled off to find the child’s mother, while a second set off after the surprisingly swift and stealthy little boy.

In the small inner library, protected by many layers of  walls of brick and steel, Mycroft poured tea and made small talk about the weather. The King responded in kind. The entire conversation was conducted in mild tones and great detail, and both knew that the phrases had very little to do with actual localised showers or wind gusts, and rather more to do with larger and less tangible events.

The door to the library opened soundlessly, but Mycroft was instantly on the alert. He turned his head and was startled he could see no person enter. In that fraction of an instant, when he began to move towards his King to protect him in whatever way possible from attack, Mycroft noticed the King’s glance angled downward, and his mouth and eyes soften in an amused smile.

Ford stood beside his father’s big, comfortable chair, holding out a toy mobile phone. “It’s the King,” said Ford with great solemnity.

Mycroft was caught in a crossfire of mortification, irritation and affection.

“The King is here, Sherrinford,” he managed to say stiffly, “And as you can see, I am having a meeting with His Majesty.”

Ford, who had discussed in great detail the tall visitor who came to their home from time to time, turned to face the stranger. Tiny he may have been, but Ford had been very attentive in all the play acting about the appropriate way to greet a king. He folded one arm over his stomach and bent in the middle, wobbled slightly, then straightened up. He frowned, and then decided to curtsey as well, like Mummy had shown him. He wobbled a bit more and stumbled, finding both Daddy and the stranger putting a hand out. He clutched his Daddy’s thumb briefly while regaining balance.

“Good afternoon, Your Majesty,” he said in his best voice, then peered at the top of his head. “Did you leave your crown at home because it gives you headaches?”

“It does get heavy, yes,” said the King with a nice smile.

Ford turned to his father and thrust the phone at him again. “It’s not the King of the _United Kingdom_ , Daddy. It’s the King of _Mars_.”

Mycroft looked at his son. He looked at his King. He looked at the plastic phone.

Some political decisions were less difficult, seeing as none of them involved that look of love and trust in big brown eyes in a beloved little face.

“You should take it,” said the King, and his voice was very warm. His eyes twinkled in the way his mother’s once did, “It’s probably important.”

This was very probably the moment in which Mycroft Holmes began to regard the new King with a real affection. “Thank you, sire. I shan’t be long.” He took the phone from his son’s small hand.

“They’ve run out of fish fingers,” Ford said helpfully, knowing that people usually gave Daddy a précis before handing him something.

“I see. Thank you, Sherrinford.”

Mycroft pressed the toy phone to his ear and, all seriousness, said: “Good afternoon, Your Royal Highness” – because he was hardly going to give an imaginary King equal ranking with his own, even with his own King sitting there, laughing at him with his eyes – “I quite understand the problem. I believe the lack of oceans on Mars must contribute significantly to the shortage.

Mycroft nodded, as though listening intently, and then said: "Hold on, sir, and I will ask my consultant for advice.” He placed his hand over the speaker. “Sherrinford, the King of Mars would like to know if I should send something to go with the fish fingers.”

“Chips,” said Ford.

“Don’t forget the lemon wedges,” said the King.

Ford nods. “Send lemons and tomato sauce so they can make pictures on the plate.”

“What do you make pictures of?” the King inquired politely.

“Mummy’s face and Sherlock’s hair,” answered Ford promptly, “And Ellis’s big black car and John’s guitar and Mars.”

“Not your Daddy?”

Sherrinford looked at the King like he was crazy. “No. I make Daddy’s face with peas and mash.”

“Of course.” The King was trying not to laugh, but he wasn’t trying very hard.

Mycroft considered adopting a pained expression, but instead he smiled indulgently at both his King and his boy.

“Well, you’re a fine chap,” the King said to Ford, “And it’s good you brought this important decision to your father’s attention. Have you passed the message on, Mr Holmes?”

They both turned to look at Mycroft. Mycroft pressed the phone back to his ear and said: “I’m so sorry for the delay, sire. My adviser suggests we send chips, lemon wedges and tomato sauce in order to facilitate the artistic side of your meal. We will send everything on the next available rocket ship.”

He held the phone out to Ford, who took it and promptly pressed it, upside down, to the side of his own head. “Thank you, Mr King,” said Ford importantly, “I have to go now. Daddy’s talking to our King about Europe and jam roly-poly.  Why don’t you ask them to send you some pudding and custard for your dessert?”

He then handed the plastic phone to the King, who took it with all due solemnity and took up the conversation with the King of Mars.

“It’s so good to speak with you again, Your Royal Highness. Young Master Holmes is quite right – you should have jam roly-poly and custard, and I’ll make sure both are added to the cargo. Why yes, everyone is very well, thank you, and my brother and his family also send their best. I will of course ask Parliament to send any excess fish fingers to you in future,” said the King, “Bye now.”

He made a show of hanging up before handing the phone back to Ford. “You are very good at keeping Mars’ affairs in order, Sherrinford. Well done.”

Ford considered this, decided the nice King was nice enough to get away with being just a little bit patronising, and stuck his hand out for shaking, again with great seriousness. The King shook the little hand with just the right amount of firmness, just as the door opened again to admit a sheepish guard and Sally Donovan. Sally was obviously half mortified, half defiant. This was, after all, their home, and she’d have defied a pantheon of alien gods for the sake of her son, let alone one local monarch.

“You have a fine fellow here,” said the King with a smile, immediately disarming the fierce and laudable Agent Donovan (of whom he had heard a great deal), “Very accomplished in both European and Martian affairs, I see.”

The King didn’t miss the glance that this fine woman bestowed on both husband and child, as though the praise belonged to both equally.

“Thank you very much, Your Majesty.”

Ford ran to his mother, who swooped him up in a hug. “Say goodbye to the King, sweetheart, so Daddy can finish his chat.”

Ford twisted in her arms to wave at the King, who waved back. Ford grinned and twisted back to his mother. “Mummy, can we make a flower crown for the King like we did for Violet?”

“I don’t think…” Sally began uncertainly.

“That would be delightful,” said the King, “If it would not put you out at all.”

“Not at all,” said Sally, even though it probably would.

As she carried Ford out, the King and Mycroft both heard Ford say, very loudly, “Mummy, there’s a phone call for you from Mars. The King wants you to read him a bed time story.” And they heard the voice of one of the toughest, strongest, most loyal agents in the nation say to an imaginary king, “Once upon a time, on a red planet not too far away, there was a little king named…” and a pause.

“Roly-poly!” declared a piping voice.

“Roly-poly,” she agreed, and then their voices faded away

It should be noted that forty minutes later, when Mycroft and the monarch had completed their discussion on the weather, a crown made of yarrow, lavender, violets and a bloom or two of London Pride was waiting on a silver plate by the door.

Which is how Mycroft Holmes came to have a photograph on his phone of a grinning monarch in a flower crown laughing with a giggling two year old boy.


	4. Brighter than the Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is surprised that he's never seen the New Year's Eve fireworks with the children before. But it turns out he doesn't like them. Nor does Ford. They take refuge from sounds and lights in each other - but their whole family is there, and John, Mary, Nirupa and Violet have their own way of taking care of their favourite geniuses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title, and some wording in the last line, are from Katy Perry's [Firework.](http://youtu.be/QGJuMBdaqIw)

Sherlock wondered why it had taken so long for him to attend a fireworks display with the children. It wasn’t as though he’d deliberately avoided them. Mostly he thought fireworks were a waste of time.  Although, now he thought on it, he'd once quite liked the florid explosions, but since returning from The Year in Hell he had always jumped at a chance to work instead of going out into the cold night to watch saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur coloured with chemicals burn.

So here he was, having given up excuses so he and Ford could accompany John, Mary, Nirupa and Violet to watch the New Year’s Eve fireworks display from Regent’s Park.

The pretty explosions in the sky at midnight were… loud. Horribly loud. And horrible. Explosions didn’t normally bother Sherlock in the slightest, but tonight, with crash upon boom upon roar upon bang, his teeth were on edge. He didn’t know how John stood it, with his army history and PTSD, standing there, holding six year old Violet in his arms and grinning up at the burning sky, pointing while Violet laughed and pointed too.

A small hand gripped his, ever more tightly, and Sherlock looked down at Ford, five years old, who had his eyes closed and mouth pulled into an unhappy frown.

Sherlock crouched down.

“Ford?”

“Mmm?” The sound was a bit strangled, as though Ford was trying to pretend everything was just fine.

Sherlock knelt beside the boy and stroked his gloved hands across Ford’s shoulders. The muscles under his hands were tense and hard as stone. “Ford, what’s wrong… oh. Yes. I see. The headaches.”

When Ford’s worst stress headaches were coming on, the boy would be dazzled by flashing lights for an hour beforehand. The signal of the coming pain often only made him more stressed, more prone to illness and pain. Sherlock knew exactly what that was like, and wished he could somehow have scooped all of that out of his boy’s brain. The best he could do was assure Ford that it would get better; that he’d grow out of it; that he’d learn to control and codify the dizzying, brain-twisting levels of input and not suffer any more. Well, not from headaches.

“Ssh,” Sherlock soothed, pulling Ford into a hug, and Ford collapsed gratefully against him, “It’s all right.”

“They’re supposed to be pretty,” muttered Ford unhappily, “But they’re like the lights when my head hurts, Sherlock. I don’t like them. I know it’s just gunpowder and aluminium and copper and barium and strontium and stuff. But I don’t like them.”

“You don’t’ have to like them.”

“You don’t like them either.” Ford peeked uncertainly up at Sherlock.

Sherlock paused to consider this. The bangs and crashes continued overhead. Sounding like car crashes. Like gunfire. Like a train’s brakes uselessly screeching before colliding with a body. Like violent death coming in a dozen shapes, and all the rational thinking in the world did not make them sound less terrible.

“No. Not really.”

“They make you think of something bad too. Is it the lights?”

“It’s the sound,” he admitted.

Ford pulled his hands out from where they were caught between his chest and Sherlock’s, and pressed his hands over Sherlock’s ears. “There,” he said, “Don’t listen.”

Sherlock smiled at his boy; raised his right hand to push Ford’s left closer to his skin. “All right. I won’t. And you don’t have to look.”

Ford blinked solemnly at Sherlock, then closed his eyes and tucked his face under Sherlock’s chin, leaving his hands over Sherlock’s ears.

Sherlock wrapped both arms around Ford and sat on his heels, gathering Ford close. He focused on the physical sensation of that small body in his arms, against his chest, curly hair tickling his chin, the little hands in their mittens against his ears. He concentrated on Ford and blocked out the sound of a past that wouldn’t stay dead.

The sensation of another small body pressing against his arm was only momentarily startling – it could only be Violet. Sherlock opened his eyes to look at her, rugged up in bright colours against the cold, as she hugged him. She was looking, not at him, but at Ford, who had opened his eyes to regard her warily.

“It’s okay if they scare you a bit,” she said kindly, “Fireworks are a bit scary. It’s like Sherlock blew up the whole house at once instead of just the kitchen.”

That made Ford smile, and Sherlock frown, but nobody was paying attention to him. “I’m not scared,” said Ford.

“Do your eyes hurt?” she asked solicitously.

“Mmm.” Ford seemed reluctant to admit it, but Violet just hugged him.

“The fireworks are pretty though. If you want to, you can close your eyes,” she said, “And I’ll tell you what they look like.”

Ford laid his head back on Sherlock’s chest and closed his eyes. “Okay.” He placed his hands, which had moved, over Sherlock’s ears again.

Violet snugged in close to Sherlock, just expecting him to wrap an arm around her, which he did, so she could rest her head on his shoulder. She tilted her face up to the sky. “This one’s like a big flower just exploded,” she said, “It’s all purple and green.”

Sherlock watched her watching the sky, and then suddenly Mary dropped down beside him on the grass, her back against his arm, as she too stared skyward. Then Nirupa was on his other side, back to his arm again, her arms folded against the cold.

“This one’s all spindly,” Violet continued, and he could hear her through the inadequate yet perfect barrier of Ford’s hands. “Do you remember when Sherlock put the soccer boot in the microwave, and the bottom of the shoe sparked up, and it made Daddy yell? It’s like that, but it’s gold and red.”

The pressure against his back was John. He could feel John’s spine against his own, and feel the tickle of John’s hair as he tilted his head back, fitting into the nape of Sherlock’s neck, so he could look up at the fireworks. John’s hand brushed briefly against his elbow, and Sherlock read it like the spoken word. _We’ve got you._

“Oh, and this one is like confetti on fire! All the colours! And it sparkles!” said Violet, and Sherlock could feel Ford’s smile against his jaw.

The crash and bang of the fireworks continued, but Sherlock easily filtered it out now. John had his back. Mary and Rupe were warm in their flanking positions, boxing him in securely. The children in his lap hugged him and shared the sky the way they shared everything.

And in Sherlock’s chest, where the chemicals of love manifested as the sensation that his heart was huge, colours burst bright.


End file.
